


The Crash

by psychoroach



Category: Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: Blood Sugar Crash, Diabetic Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 22:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12757020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychoroach/pseuds/psychoroach
Summary: Kendall Morgan suffers a blood sugar crash.





	The Crash

**Author's Note:**

> This is a completely self indulgent fic that I wrote after seeing that type 2 diabetes (that I have) is considered a "chronic disease" and that anyone who has it has a 10 year shorter life expectancy rate due to "complications" from it. The way Kendall manages her diabetes (except the icing part, which is just what I was told I could do for mine) is my experience. Diabetes is different for everyone, so if this doesn't match your experience, that's because it's based on just mine.

Kendall Morgan sat at her area in what used to be the Dino Charge Ranger's base of communications, on her computer as usual. Except instead of doing anything Ranger related, since there was no need for Dino Charge Rangers anymore, she was working on things for the muse...zoo. It was still hard, even almost two years later, to remember that their defeat of Sledge had altered history. So now instead of dealing with old artifacts and fossils in a museum, she dealt with real, live dinosaurs in Amber Beach Dino Zoo. It was chaos, and dangerous at times, but she'd grown used to it and in a weird way it was her new normal. 

She had yet to get used to other changes, though. It was hard to believe just two years ago she was saving the world with a caveman and a knight of Zandar. Both had gone back to their own eras, and it was almost as if they didn't exist anymore. When Kendall came down to the base after they found out the timeline had changed, the first thing she did was check to see if the series of caves Koda had used and lived in were still there. They weren't. Instead there was a blank wall and beyond that was more of the zoo. It had taken Kendall several weeks to get over that one, and even now it snuck up on her sometimes. The only reason she knew Koda and Ivan had been real and in their lives, besides the others having the same memory of them, was one day she found a pile of furs off in a corner of the room and Riley, before he left to go back home, found one of Ivan's old training swords with a note on it that said he was leaving it for him. That alone had crippled Kendall, and made her wonder if somehow Ivan knew what would happen.

Which brought her to then. Ivan and Koda were back in their own eras, Prince Phillip was back doing his duties, Hekyll and Zenowing were back on their home planet, Keeper was back wherever he came from and Riley had gone back home. The only ones that stayed were Chase, Tyler and Shelby. Kendall wasn't exactly sure why they stayed, but she was glad for it. Chase, especially, had a family in New Zealand he could go home to but he'd said Amber Beach felt more like a home to him now and he did his usual duties in the Dino Bite café. Tyler decided to go to school and was in the midst of taking his basics while deciding exactly what he wanted to do. Shelby found out in a surprising way that instead of majoring in fossils and artifacts, in the new timeline she was majoring in Dinozoology, which she'd taken to like a duck to water and Kendall found her help invaluable sometimes. 

Kendall had been at her desk so long, she didn't feel her hunger hit her, nor did she realize her mood was dropping, which was a sure sign her blood sugar was getting low. She'd been dealing with diabetes since she was young, and at this point it was easy to keep a check on her blood sugar levels and to adjust her diet accordingly. She knew it needed to be anywhere between 85 to 150 for it to be normal, or from what she'd been told and researched about, but she preferred hers to be anywhere between 100 and 125 if she could help it. Too low and it made her feel irrational and starving, too high and it made her feel sick. It was a fine line that she had to toe, and when she was younger, after her diagnosis, it felt like the world was ending and all she could think about for months was 'well I can't eat this' or 'I can't have that'. She'd just recently had it explained to her that the reason her blood sugar shot up more after she ate a piece of fruit than when she had a (normal sized, not any sort of special) piece of cake was because her body recognized the cake as an 'artificial sweet' and combatted to keep the blood sugar low. That combined with the metformin she took to keep her blood sugar under control lowered it more and because her body recognized something like an apple as an ok, natural food, it didn't fight as hard to lower her blood sugar, so the natural pectin in the apple kept her blood sugar spiked pretty high, even with the addition of the metformin (and it would spike it much higher if she didn't take it). She also had Lantus shots she could take, but her doctor told her she only needed to do that if her blood sugar went over 250 or so and she needed to bring it way down over a period of 24 hours. Kendall scoffed at that, because there was no way she'd ever allow her blood sugar to go over 250.

No one outside of her family knew Kendall was a diabetic and she liked to keep it that way. It wasn't that she was ashamed by it, not by a long shot, but being a female in a predominantly male field (and what field of work out there wasn't a predominantly male one these days?) she didn't need anyone to see her as weak or thinking she couldn't do her job because of her diabetes. She'd fight tooth and nail over it if she needed to. 

Kendall was so out of it, she didn't notice Chase, Shelby and Tyler coming in, all three of them looking over to where their energems used to rest instinctively. "Kendall, we need to order more produce for the herbivores." She'd softened to having people call her 'Miss Morgan' because after you save the world with people, it made them deserving of at least calling you by your first name. "We're completely out of lettuce, and most of the greens. Kale seems to be a big hit. We still have a good bit of tomatoes though." 

"Yeah and we need some more fries for..." Chase trailed off. "Kendall, do you feel ok? You're awfully pale." He walked over to where she was sitting and put a hand to her cheek. She leaned into the touch unconsciously, before she became aware enough to halfheartedly push his hand away. 

"Do'tou'sh me." Kendall slurred, licking her lips. She turned her chair around and let out a 'whuh' noise as her vision swam dangerously and she would've slumped out of her seat if Chase hadn't been there to catch her. 

"Kendall, you're sick or something." Chase said, eyes wide. "What's wrong? Do you feel ok? Should we call an ambulance?" 

Kendall shook her head, which didn't help the dizziness. "I'm...I just..." She gestured at Shelby. "Grab my purse." 

"Are you sure we don't need an ambulance?" Shelby grabbed Kendall's purse and held it out to her. 

"No ambul'nce." Kendall dug through her purse and took out a small black zipped up bag and opened it. Both Chase and Shelby's eyes widened as she took out her blood sugar monitor, the lance she stuck her finger with, and the bottle that held the testing strips. She unzipped the little compartment up top and took out one of the needles, attempting to unscrew the top on it so she could put it in the lance. Her fingers fumbled with it and she held it out to Chase impatiently. "Undo that." 

Chase fumbled to grab the tiny little needle and it took him a few seconds, but he figured out what to do before gently handing it back. Kendall stuck it in the lance and put it back together before grabbing a sterile wipe and putting a strip in the meter. She wiped her finger off and pricked it, pulling up enough blood so she could test it. 

"Kendall, are you diabetic?" Tyler clued in. He had a guy in one of his classes that was and he finally recognized what she was doing.

"Mmm, since 12." Kendall said, waiting until the meter beeped before wiping her finger off. She recapped the needle and put it aside, along with the bloody sterile wipe. She looked at the meter expectantly and when it flashed a '34' she cursed quietly and pulled the strip out. She gathered up the trash and attempted to throw it away, but Chase took it from her (not even seeming to care about the small dot of blood on the sterile wipe and testing strip as he threw it away. "I need...um..." She gestured to a drawer in her desk.

Chase jerked it open and looked inside. "A candy stash? And here I thought you were just a really big fitness junkie." 

"Icing." Kendall said, and if she was in her right mind she would've felt impatient. 

"This?" Chase took out a small gel icing tube he found and Kendall took it and squeezed some under her tongue. 

"Do you need to eat anything now?" Shelby asked, frowning in worry. 

"Probably." Kendall said, and she winced when her stomach growled loud enough that it made even Tyler, who was at least five feet away, raise his eyebrows. 

"I'll go get your usual order from the café." He said quickly.

"Tyler." Kendall said before he could leave, feeling just a little bit clearer from the quick bite of sugar. "Sugary soda, maybe...fruit salad." She suggested, meaning along with her usual order.

Tyler nodded and darted out of the room. 

"So why didn't you tell us you had diabetes?" Chase asked curiously after he left. 

"I didn't want any of you to look at me any differently." Kendall said quietly. 

"Well we do." Chase said simply.

"You do?" Kendall asked, feeling crushed. 

"Uh, yeah." Shelby said. "Our friend has diabetes and suffered a pretty severe sugar drop. I'm guessing 34 isn't exactly normal range?" 

"Normal is 85 to 150." Kendall said quietly. 

Chase's eyes bugged out. "85 to 150?!" He exclaimed. "Oh yeah, we definitely have our eyes open now." 

"So what? You don't respect me anymore?" Kendall asked. When she had blood sugar problems, sometimes she had trouble keeping things in. 

"Uh, are you nuts?" Shelby asked. "If anything, I respect you even more. It can't be hard doing everything you do and making sure your blood sugar stays high enough it doesn't effect you." 

"How'd you even do your Ranger duties with this?" Chase asked. He wasn't judging, just curious. 

Kendall shrugged. "I just...managed it. Mostly after an attack, I'd come and pig out and check my levels." 

Chase shook his head and bent down next to her chair. "Definitely still respect you, even more now like Shelby said. You're a wonder, Kendall Morgan." 

Kendall flushed a bit and shook her head. "I'm just..." 

"Oh just take the compliment!" Shelby exclaimed, causing Kendall to laugh. It felt more normal to her and she was glad for it.

**Author's Note:**

> I deliberately made this non-shippy because I wanted the focus to be on Kendall, but if you wanted to look at it with a Chase/Kendall slant I wouldn't me mad at you. ;)


End file.
